Chapter 75: Aeglos

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The dwarves and Bilbo all sat around one big table, and the faces of the dwarves turned a little strange when they didn't see any meat on the table, and only veggies.

As for Gandalf, Thorin and Edward, they were accompanied by Elrond and Glorfindel, it was in a way a 'high table'.

Around them, several elves were playing a soft music that made Edward feel relaxed, and all his current problems, regaining his strength, saving Diana, they seemed to disappear. The music was so soothing to the soul Edward felt it could even compare to the mermaids' music, but without the bewitching effect.

At the high table, Elrond had Thorin's sword in his hands, and he analysed, "This is Orcrist, the Goblin Cleaver. It is a famous blade, forged by the High Elves of the West, my kin… It will serve you well."

He handed the sword back to Thorin, who nodded in thanks for the clarification, and Elrond now had Gandalf's sword, "This is Glamdring, the Foe Hammer, sword of the king of Gondolin, Turgon," Elrond gave the sword back to Gandalf, "Where did you find such swords?"

Gandalf replied, "In a troll's cave, at the end of the East Road, shortly before we were ambushed by Orcs."

Elrond asked, "And what were you doing on the East Road?"

Thorin frowned and suddenly got up, leaving both the table and the conversation to join his fellow dwarves. Seeing the situation was a little tense, Edward said, "Those were not the only weapons we found on that cave."

Elrond looked curious, and Gandalf nodded, "Indeed, I was surprised seeing that weapon myself, to the point I even doubted my eyes."

This interested both Elrond and Glorfindel, who had remained quiet since their initial introduction. Edward got up from his seat and took out the spear he got from the cave.

As he did, he felt shock from Elrond and Glorfindel as they both got up, and Elrond extended his hands, asking, "May I?"

Edward didn't expect such a reaction from the two calm elves, and handed it to him. Elrond patted the spear, looking closely at it, before asking, "You found this… in a troll's cave."

Gandalf nodded, and Edward asked, "Does it have a special origin?"

Elrond hummed, "Yes, it does. This was the weapon of the last High King of the Noldor, Gil-galad. With this spear, and the High King of Dunedain, Elendil, they both duelled against the Dark Lord Sauron and killed his mortal body. Although the price for this was their own lives, it allowed Elendil's son, Isildur, to cut off the One Ring from Sauron's hand and defeat him."

Edward was quite shocked by the explanation, as this was quite different from what he remembered in the movies. The movies showed Isildur holding his father's broken sword, and Sauron extending his hand toward him, allowing him to cut off his finger.

Well, Edward had always found Sauron's defeat to be quite idiotic, but it seemed what truly happened made much more sense, and was a far more catastrophic battle.

Excited he got such an amazing blade, but also a little scared the elves would try to steal it from him, he asked, "What it's name?"

Much to Edward's relief, Elrond handed the spear back to Edward and it was Glorfindel who said, "Aeglos, Snow Point or Icicle, a weapon of much fame among the elves. It's blade was sharp enough to pierce through the armor and body of Sauron, and it's chill so great it forcefully extinguished Sauron's flames."

Edward stored the spear back into his Spacial Bracelet, finally getting a reaction from Elrond who exclaimed, "This is a most peculiar magic."

Gandalf explained, "As I said, Edward is quite the magician himself, only that his power is sealed."

Edward picked up the explanation, "This wasn't done through a spell, but thanks to an artefact, my bracelet…" He explained to them how his Spacial Ring worth, and made them his offer for friendship. He decided to include Glorfindel too in the gift.

After this, Elrond, Gandalf and Thorin left to talk about a map, leaving Edward and Glorfindel alone. After a moment, Edward asked, "Do you know how to use the spear?"

Glorfindel shrugged and replied, "I have used the sword for most of my life, but I have had some training with the spear, why?"

Edward grinned and explained, "I can feel you are very strong, and I specialize in the sword too, but since I have gotten this spear I may as well learn how to use it."

Glorfindel thought about it for a couple of seconds, before nodding, "Fine, I don't mind. I can also feel you have something unique to you."

Edward smiled at that, "Not to brag, but my power is currently sealed, and I am working to fix that. I may be only somewhat stronger than an average human right now, at my peak I am quite powerful myself, although I can't really match you, with time I will."

Glorfindel snorted, "You have confidence, that's good. Let's see whether you will think the same after our fight."

Edward knew he had sparked Glorfindel's fighting spirit, and he would learn a lot from this fight. Dragon had taught him how to use many weapons, giving him a rough mastery of the spear, but it never went beyond that.

However, coupled with his Chi Sense, and his combat experience, he was fairly confident in himself.

The two arrived at a closed hall, which had some place in it. Glorfindel went to grab a spear and whirled it with experience as a smile graced his lips and he taunted, "Still want that match?"

Edward grinned back and used his Spiritual Energy to fly one of the spears that looked the most like Aeglos, "Careful, I wouldn't want to mess up your hair."

Glorfindel laughed and suddenly jumped at Edward, stabbing his spear toward him. Edward immediately noticed that Glorfindel did not use his full power, far from it, and instead limited himself to around Edward's strength.

It showed how great Glorfindel's senses were, to feel his exact strength, as well as his noble character.

Edward took a step back and whirled the spear around him, then using the momentum to hit Glorfindel's spear head, deviating it's course completely and opening his defence.

However, Glorfindel looked natural as he used the momentum of his own deviated spear to dodge Edward's strike, and even managed to send a kick at Edward, which he only dodged because of his Chi Sense.

"Not so tough after all." Edward's spear pierced toward Glorfindel's gut.

"I feel like I'm fighting a child." Glorfindel blocked the spear head with the butt of his spear, and whipped it at Edward's face.

"Well I heard you elves live for quite a long time, so I'm certainly a child in your standards." Edward infused his hand with Chi and grabbed the incoming spear, and kicked at Glorfindel's solar plexus.

"That was surprising." Glorfindel slammed the butt of his spear onto the ground and lifted himself off the ground using the spear as support, hammering his feet down at Edward.

Edward let go of the spear to defend against the kick, but before it even arrived at him he realized his mistake. Glorfindel's kick hit Edward's arm, doing no damage, but his spear came right after, and although Edward saw it coming, his arm was already blocking the kick.

The spear hit his shoulder, but only shattered as it slammed against Edward's Chi. However, he didn't try to attack, and conceded, "I lost."

Glorfindel landed on the ground at the same time and advised, "You are a great fighter, but you are too reliant on your prediction ability, and once I understood all I had to do was to trap you."

Edward nodded slightly, and took a few steps back before blocking his Chi Sense and saying, "Let's fight again."

For this fight, Edward did not use his Chi Sense, and as expected, he was defeated even quicker. However, he did not mind and continued challenging Glorfindel.

As for the elf, he wasn't bothered by Edward's challenges, but rather interested by the man. He was indeed much different from any other man he had seen, it wasn't because of strength, nor talent, but his determination to grow stronger.

He had no idea what it was, but Glorfindel could sense a strong will to grow stronger within Edward, one that kept him challenging the elf.

For the next few hours, the two spared against one another, until night fell. During this time, they not only fought, but also talked a lot, Edward did not explicitly say he was from another world, but talked about his homeland.

He also felt a little depressed when he learned Glorfindel was around 7000 years old, he knew elves were long living, but he expected him to be a few hundred years old at most, he already had many friends much older than him, but now Glorfindel had bested Thor, his past oldest friend, by a large margin.

With those few hours of fighting, Edward felt his spearmanship improve quickly, to the point he managed to reach the limit for his understanding of the spear, a much quicker process than with the sword.

Glorfindel was right, he was relying too much on his Chi Sense, and it was why he had taken so long to understand the sword. Of course, there were other factors to this quick understanding, his battle experience, his experience with the sword and most importantly, Glorfindel's own mastery.

The understanding of the world, as far as he knew, was unique to him, but that didn't mean he became better with the spear than anyone in the world the moment he started understanding the spear.

One could continue getting more skilled without understanding a Concept, Edward had misled himself into thinking that because of how he learned the Sword Concept with Merlin, but his recent understanding of the four elemental Concepts, as well as Space and Time, and now the Spear, made him understand he was wrong.

The Concept was a deep understanding of an aspect of reality that allowed him to manipulate said aspect. Of course understanding the Concept of the Spear would help him master spear techniques, but it was more about drawing all the power it had than influencing the world than learning it's techniques.

For example, the Sword Concept allowed him to send flying slashes, and the Spear Concept to cover his Spear with an aura not too dissimilar to Chi.

This was not done through skill, and was probably impossible to achieve through Chi, he was influencing the power of the world to coat his weapons. It was a kind of strange magic, as Gandalf had first said when they met.

But it was quite esoteric in essence and thus hard to explain or understand, Edward himself wasn't really sure he was right about all of his assumptions. All he knew was that he had made a friend in Glorfindel.

As the light of the moon shone through one of the windows of the Hall of Combat, Edward, who was using his training spear as support, said, "The night has fallen, it's time for me to make those Spacial Bracelets."

Glorfindel, who had barely broken a sweat, asked, "Do you need raw ores or forged jewellery?"

Edward replied, "Forged already. From a metal that is sensitive to magic, the more sensitive, the better. I need a new one myself, one for Gandalf, one for you, one for Lord Elrond… Can you get me four bracelets?"

Glorfindel grinned, "Don't worry I'll get that for you."

He walked away, excited about this strange artefact, while Edward walked toward the Moon Forge.